Furor at Spanish-Language TV Stations : Media: Employees say KMEX, KVEA bowed to advertisers by airing favorable reports on legal referral services after coverage of alleged industry abuses.

A bitter controversy has erupted at Spanish-language television stations KMEX and KVEA this week after the stations broadcast laudatory follow-up stories to news reports about alleged abuses at legal referral services, some of which advertise on the stations.

Several news employees at the two Los Angeles stations told The Times they complained to news executives that the follow-up stories compromised the integrity of their broadcasts. They said the stations bowed to pressure from their largest local advertisers.

One advertiser, Centro de Proteccion Legal, withdrew its commercials from KVEA Channel 52 for one week after the broadcast of a report about an investigation of legal referrals.

The report generated a flood of calls to both stations from immigrants who said they had complained about attorneys contacted through some of the services.

Station executives denied that they were pressured to run the follow-up stories. They said the original reports, aired Nov. 28 and 29, were accurate and fair and included interviews with industry representatives. But station officials said the stories needed further clarification.

“Our news department runs a completely independent operation,” said KMEX station manger Larry Gonzales. “We’re pleased with the work they’ve done.”

The first broadcasts reported that a “summit conference” on the alleged abuses by Los Angeles legal referral services was held by the State Bar of California, the Mexican-American Bar Assn., the Los Angeles city attorney, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and others.

The services place Spanish-speaking clients in contact with attorneys who represent them in lawsuits involving everything from auto accidents to immigration matters and work injuries.

The State Bar and others have launched a campaign to protect the Spanish-speaking community from uncertified legal referral services. State law requires the agencies to ensure their lawyers meet minimum professional standards.

Centro de Proteccion Legal, Los Defensores and other advertisers in the Spanish media maintain they do not need to be certified as referral agencies because they are “advertising cooperatives.”

On the day after the broadcasts, several key members of the news staffs at both stations said they were forced to air the follow-up segments because station executives feared offending the advertisers. The staff members all spoke on condition of anonymity , saying they feared they would be fired.

“It’s a slap in the face to us,” said one staff member at KVEA. “We have more responsibility than other television stations in town because there’s such a large Latino community that doesn’t understand anything else and looks to us for information.”

George Dale, chief counsel for Centro de Proteccion Legal, said he met with executives at both stations after the original broadcasts.

“We clearly felt that they had run a lousy story,” Dale said. “We said this is not right. And the way for you to make it right is for you to come in and to ask as many questions as you want and give us a chance to answer these questions directly.”

Dale said Centro de Proteccion--a major advertiser that spends more than $9 million a year in the Spanish-language media--withdrew its ads from KVEA for a week, but said that it was not a punitive action.

The Nov. 29 report on KVEA featured an interview with a representative of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. who said that some referral services have names that make them appear to be government agencies. Dale said the accusations were false.

“We were concerned that having this ad on the air while this story was running was wasting our money,” he said. “We were not trying to put economic pressure or punitive pressure on the station.”

Dale said that advertising was not withdrawn from KMEX Channel 34 because its report was not as “outrageous” as KVEA’s.

At KVEA, the Nov. 30 follow-up story announced in Spanish: “Our journalistic work has revealed that these services provide a great help to many of our viewers. . . .

“The legal assistance has been outstanding in immigration matters and also in recovering compensation for injuries,” the broadcast said. “The help provided by these services of legal assistance has been from all points of view of singular value for our community.”

The station also ran a second follow-up on its evening news broadcast on Wednesday. The three-minute segment--longer than the original broadcast--featured an interview with Tito Alvarez, president of Centro de Proteccion Legal, but did not mention the previous allegations.

KVEA news director Jesus Javier said that he had not been pressured to run the follow-up stories. But he said representatives of the legal referral services were “concerned about how their image is projected, about their image being misrepresented.”

“Like any normal media organization, we’re sensitive to our clients,” Javier added. “I’m sure that other stations confront the same thing.”

Key news staff members at KVEA and KMEX said that when Centro de Proteccion Legal threatened to pull its ads from the stations, news executives agreed to grant their spokesmen extensive air time on evening news programs.

“If the viewers are being duped and misled, they have a right to know (about any problems with the referral agencies),” said one member of the KMEX news staff. “I don’t care how many millions of dollars these companies are pouring into KMEX or KVEA. It doesn’t mean they own the airwaves.”

Members of the advertising sales department at KMEX oversaw the production of a “follow-up” story that consisted of extensive interviews with spokesmen for Centro de Proteccion Legal and Los Defensores, according to sources.

A station official denied that advertising personnel were involved with the follow-up story.

One staffer described the scene in the newsroom before the Nov. 29 follow-up broadcast as “chaotic,” with the representative of one referral service engaged in a heated exchange with reporters.

KVEA station manager Steve Levin denied that advertising considerations played any role in the decision to run the follow-ups.